Aesthetic aims to combine a minimalist approach of few distractions with a clean yet colorful and visually appealing design.

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When I started playing osu! a few months ago and decided to look around for some skins, I was both surprised and disappointed that a vast majority of those advertised as simple or minimalist didn't meet my idea of such a skin at all. Even now, I can count the number of really clean skins I've seen on one hand. When I started working on this, I knew none.

My goal was to create a skin for myself and those who are interested in using it. A tight skin optimized for playing that still manages to look pretty. No shadows, reflections or other effects that make the circles look fancier, just a plain and flat theme.

I've been working on this skin off and on during the last few months, adding on and improving step by step. Right now, it's pretty much complete for osu! standard mode, although there are a few things here and there that may need tweaking. I plan to expand this skin for all modes in the future, but I'd like to take my time to familiarize myself with the gameplay and come up with some ideas first.

If you decide to give this skin a try, thanks! I hope you enjoy it.

All feedback is welcome, I'm happy to find new ways to improve this skin.

Additional Information

Hitcircles

The Aesthetic skin provides three different hitcircles that users can choose from, depending on preference. All hitcircles are designed to blend in seamlessly with slider borders.

Hit bursts

The hit bursts adapt the new default colour scheme to a flat look. When playing for scores and optimal performance, I see 300 hits as an unnecessary distraction, so they are disabled by default. If you prefer to play with these hit bursts, they are still included in the Extra folder.

For this skin, I attempted to create a new set of icons in simple shapes that remain recognizable even when viewed at a small size. In addition, the mod icons are divided into colour categories that allow them to be quickly recognized by their nature. Roughly speaking, red mods increase difficulty, green mods make a beatmap easier. Silver mods make reading a map harder and are required for silver S ranks, special mods are purple.

Combo bursts

This skin doesn't contain any combo bursts. The idea is to keep the design as neutral as possible, and I can't think of any way of putting combo bursts as they are to good use with that in mind. Feel free to add your favourite combo bursts from other skins, or create your own!

.osk - Quite simple, just download the .osk file and open it in osu!. If you already have an earlier version of the skin and want to update, make sure you delete the old version first. You can also rename the old skin folder instead.

.zip - Extract the Aesthetic folder using your file manager of choice and put it in the Skins folder at your osu! installation directory, typically at C:\Program Files\osu!\Skins

Changelog

Version 1.3

Added mania skin, including keys and notes in 6 different colors and white.

Various changes to support skin version 2.2 and the new beatmap panels:

Adjusted menu-button-background and stars

Fixed alignment of ranking letters on the new beatmap panel layout

Added cursor smoke

New hitcircleselect in the editor

Small adjustment to the normal-hitnormal hitsound

Added the updated menu buttons that should have been there last time

Added a Target Practice mod icon

Changed the mania Fade In mod icon

Slight adjustment of the colour scheme of all hitbursts, mod icons and menu options

Added a little glow to the approach circle to make it appear smoother

Adjusted the hitlighting

Probably more that I forgot about because it's been a while.

Update 1

New Pause/Fail screen

Fixed typo on osu!mania hitbursts

Cursor-smoke redone to fix the nasty edges in SD, and reduced in size

Added osu! and osu!mania mode icons

Moved default and score fonts to a separate folder, and added a black score font set

Small adjustments to default and score fonts, scorebar, small ranking letters and key overlay

Version 1.2

New small ranking icons

Adjusted shading of default and ring hitcircles from being too bright and flat to a pastel look.

I don't usually post on the forums, however the skin caught my eye. It is really well done. Just played a map, and it is really easy to play with. Took me a few seconds to get use to since it was a bit more busy than skins I use. The design of each element matched really well. The only thing I didn't like was the pause screen. The pause in the background was too much of a distraction for me and didn't seem to fit. Since you said that standard is pretty much complete, I would suggest an optional hitcircle with a transparent middle like this. Also suggest a background for ranking graph.

The first update is here. It may be a small one, but there's some new hitcircles to test, let me know which one you like best!Some of the issues you addressed aren't fixed yet, which I will hopefully take care of soon.

I don't usually post on the forums, however the skin caught my eye. It is really well done. Just played a map, and it is really easy to play with. Took me a few seconds to get use to since it was a bit more busy than skins I use. The design of each element matched really well. The only thing I didn't like was the pause screen. The pause in the background was too much of a distraction for me and didn't seem to fit. Since you said that standard is pretty much complete, I would suggest an optional hitcircle with a transparent middle like this. Also suggest a background for ranking graph.

Thanks! That means a lot. Seeing that you created a skin in much the same spirit and how well it was received was a good motivation to finish this one. I tested your hitcircle idea for a while and I ended up liking it a lot. I included it along with a completely transparent hitcircle in this update, so it should appeal to more players with different preferences. I also put finding a possible replacement for the pause screen on my to do list. Can you elaborate on how exactly it feels distracting or unfitting? Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

Pannari wrote:

This skin is /extremely/ beautiful. The only thing is that the hitsounds could be a bit louder, and this would be perfect.

You might be right - I put this on my list too, so I'll have a look the hitsounds and see which need a bit of a boost and/or improvement. Thank you again!